A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
Asymptotic Utility of Spectral Anonymization
Authors: Perkonoja, Katariina; Virta, Joni
Editors: Domingo-Ferrer, Josep; Önen, Melek
Conference name: International Conference on Privacy in Statistical Databases
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Book title : Privacy in Statistical Databases : International Conference, PSD 2024, Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France, September 25–27, 2024 Proceedings
Journal name in source: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume: 14915
First page : 51
Last page: 66
ISBN: 978-3-031-69650-3
eISBN: 978-3-031-69651-0
ISSN: 0302-9743
eISSN: 1611-3349
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69651-0_4
Web address : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-69651-0_4
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/458391801
In the contemporary data landscape characterized by multi-source data collection and third-party sharing, ensuring individual privacy stands as a critical concern. While various anonymization methods exist, their utility preservation and privacy guarantees remain challenging to quantify. In this work, we address this gap by studying the utility and privacy of the spectral anonymization (SA) algorithm, particularly in an asymptotic framework. Unlike conventional anonymization methods that directly modify the original data, SA operates by perturbing the data in a spectral basis and subsequently reverting them to their original basis. Alongside the original version P-SA, employing random permutation transformation, we introduce two novel SA variants: J-spectral anonymization and O-spectral anonymization, which employ sign-change and orthogonal matrix transformations, respectively. We show how well, under some practical assumptions, these SA algorithms preserve the first and second moments of the original data. Our results reveal, in particular, that the asymptotic efficiency of all three SA algorithms in covariance estimation is exactly 50% when compared to the original data. To assess the applicability of these asymptotic results in practice, we conduct a simulation study with finite data and also evaluate the privacy protection offered by these algorithms using distance-based record linkage. Our research reveals that while no method exhibits clear superiority in finite-sample utility, O-SA distinguishes itself for its exceptional privacy preservation, never producing identical records, albeit with increased computational complexity. Conversely, P-SA emerges as a computationally efficient alternative, demonstrating unmatched efficiency in mean estimation.
Funding information in the publication:
The study was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (grant 00220801) and the Research Council of Finland (grants 347501 and 353769).